Random Pregnancy Thoughts, Sunday Edition

• Another weekend is nearly gone and another of my 40 weeks has gone speeding by. 26 down, 14 to go! According to my super-sharp math skills, I am now two-thirds of the way through this pregnancy! It’s hard to believe. The third trimester officially starts next Saturday (cue scary theme music: dum dum DUM!) …

• This week’s episode of baby brain: In the middle of the afternoon yesterday, I realized I’d been wearing my underwear both backward and inside out all day and had no idea until I actually saw it.

• I keep wondering when I can just give up on exercising altogether and not feel guilty about it. I was doing pretty good on my 3-4 times a week up until the last couple weeks. It seems like the pregnancy gods don’t WANT me to exercise anyway. I mean, first the TV downstairs breaks down, completely eliminating my ability to use the elliptical, and then the weather plunges back into freezing temperatures, taking away my motivation to take nice, long walks outside. And I just can’t bring myself to do my Wii yoga and strength training lately.

• You hear about it all the time, you see it on TV, you say it will never happen to you, and then it happens: you find more and more of your conversations with friends who are parents or parents-to-be centering around all things baby. We had some friends over Sunday and they brought their 14-month-old, and we spent at least 75% of the whole afternoon talking registries, cribs, first words, nannies and all that scintillating stuff. But it WAS scintillating! We had a great time. It was fun to watch their little one and think about where we’ll be in another year, and it was certainly helpful to get their advice. The same thing happened today when I was at a wedding shower. Much of the table conversation centered around babies and pregnancy, since another one of the girls at the table was also pregnant and a second one has a 10-month-old. It worked out great because A) I always enjoy talking about baby stuff these days and B) I honestly don’t know what else I would have talked about with those girls for all that time otherwise. Thank heavens for finally finding some common ground!

• Side note on the shower: We were playing one of the typical shower games (mercifully, they were kept short and sweet), and someone at our table won, prompting a relative of the bride-to-be sitting at another table to yell out, “Who won? Was it the prego?” Lovely.

• I’ve been sleeping terribly lately, and I might actually have to start blaming the pregnancy. I’m often a bad sleeper and go through phases where I wake up in the middle of the night and can never seem to get back to sleep, but this is different. For the past two weeks, I’ll fall asleep just fine (thank goodness), wake up at 3 or 4 to go to the bathroom (which has been going on for most of the pregnancy) and then literally wake up every hour or half hour for the rest of the night. I just roll over (a process that involves more struggling and grunting as the weeks tick by) and fall back asleep, but still, it’s really getting old. I think it’s one of the reasons why I’ve been getting so tired later in the day again.

• On a fun note, little baby X has gotten better at kicking, and Andy’s been able to feel it a bunch of times now, which is fun for both of us. We were at the movies seeing “I Love You Man” the other night (yes, I like that kind of silly humor, and what of it?) and she was really going to town with the kung-fu fighting. She must be a Paul Rudd and Jason Segal fan just like Mommy …

The Pregnancy Paradox

Today after work I dragged Andy out for a brisk walk (well, as brisk as I get these days) in the balmy, day-before-the-first-day-of-spring weather (it was 37). As we moseyed along the perimeter of the park that’s a few blocks from our house, Andy admitted to me that some of the stories he’s been hearing lately from his co-workers are starting to make him nervous.

You see, Andy is fortunate enough to work with two guys who are both new dads. One has a three-month-old boy and the other, twin girls who are maybe 6 or 8 months old (yowsah). The thing about guys is that they talk about life with a new baby in a whole different way that women do. Women kind of subtly acknowledge the unimaginable kinds of hell that early babyhood can unleash on a household while in the same breath, extolling the virtues of parenthood to keep you from being scared right out of joining the club. Men, on the other hand, revel in frightening their pals with all the gory details, and if there’s two of them, you can pretty much bet that there’s some level of competition there, something along the lines of, “Oh, you think YOUR exploding diaper story is bad. Wait til you hear THIS!”

Today specifically, the story that rattled Andy was from his co-worker with the twins, who’d had just one of THOSE days at work and by 5 o’clock was ready to just explode in frustration. All he wanted to do was go home, take a load off and relax. But at about ten after five, his wife called and asked in a way that was more a demand than a question, “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO BE HOME?” When he said he was heading out in a few minutes, she said, “Well, the minute you get here, these kids are all yours. I have had a HORRIBLE day.” He was about to tell her that his day had been pretty bad, too – but she’d already hung up the phone. Andy says his other colleague has received calls like that on a few occasions, too.

I, of course, sympathized with the wives. Why should the man’s (or whoever is at work and not at home with the baby) day get to end at 5 and the woman’s have to go on indefinitely? Andy wasn’t really arguing for either; the whole thing just made him a little uneasy about the challenges we’ll be facing in, well, somewhere around 15 weeks.

15 weeks sounds like a long time until you think about how fast time really goes. I’ve already been pregnant for 24 weeks and 5 days, and I’ve known about it (because that’s the time that really seems to count) for about 19 of those weeks. That’s already a month more than 15 weeks, and let me tell you, that time has FLOWN by.

And that brings me to what I like to call the Pregnancy Paradox. That, as I’ll explain, is the ironic reality that for a lot of us, surprisingly little of the 40 weeks of pregnancy are spent focusing on the actual baby-to-be.

See, for the first trimester, you’re pretty much just obsessed with the idea that you’re actually pregnant. Just about every day, even before you’re showing at all, it’s like, “Wow, I am PREGNANT. There is a child growing inside me, which must mean that I am a real ADULT. I can’t believe such a grown-up thing is happening to me.” (This is true even if you are 32 and should by all accounts have already been thinking of yourself as a real adult for some time.) Along with all that comes the all the worry about whether the pregnancy will stick, how your body will change, and what you need to eat/drink/do differently to take care of yourself.

In the second trimester, all of that stuff keeps going, but you add to that more concrete physical (but remember, not mental) preparation for the arrival of the baby – decorating the nursery; registering; signing up for classes; buying huge, tent-like maternity clothes, etc. And don’t forget all the time spent staring at your ever-expanding, kind-of-freaky-but-definitely-amazing belly in the mirror (or is that just me?).

As for the third trimester, well, ask me in 2 weeks and 1 day (WOW, scary), but I have to imagine that my “preparations” will evolve into even more self-involved hobbies like talking about how huge I feel and how uncomfortable I am and how I can’t sleep – all that fun stuff I’m fully expecting to feel during what one of my pregnant friends ominously refers to as “the whale stage.”

The point (yep, I’m finally here! did you stay for the ride?) is that the Pregnancy Paradox is actually a really, really good thing. See, all that obsessing leaves little time left to ponder that actual reality of the baby herself. While it’s certainly important to understand – as much as one can – the demands of parenthood and how your life will change, there’s nothing you can really do to prepare for what those first few months will be like, and worrying about it will only make things worse. I’ve spent pretty much my whole life being a serious, dedicated worrier, and what I’ve tried to teach myself in the last few years is that worrying – contrary to my long-held belief – doesn’t actually help you prepare for whatever it is you’re worried about. It just makes the anticipation miserable.

So if you’re wondering when all my prattling on about my belly button and Cubs games and the nursery is going to end, well, don’t hold your breath. The Pregnancy Paradox is my life preserver right now, and there’s no way I’m letting go any time soon.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame?

Ali and Andy at Wrigley last summer

It’s an annual rite of (almost) spring: Every year, one glorious day in mid-February – and there aren’t many of those out here in the tundra known as Chicagoland – my productivity at work is slightly thrown off by my fanatical devotion to my favorite sports team – the Cubs, of course!

I’m talking about the day tickets for the season go on sale, a happy, festive occasion celebrated with bouts of dialing and redialing the ticket line (800-THE-CUBS) and arranging every program in my computer desktop around a small window showing my spot in the virtual waiting room (where you can sit all day and never get in).

Before you shake your head at my impatience and dare to suggest that I just wait a few days until the fervor dies down, let me explain that in the first couple of hours the best games are always already sold out and by afternoon, you can barely score a decent solo seat for any weekend game all year.

Andy and I usually go to anywhere from 10 to 20 games per season, supplementing the tickets we buy the first day they go on sale with games we get later in the year from our friend Kris, who we used to split a pair of night-and-weekend season tickets with and who still sells us a bunch of games in those seats as needed (thank goodness). Of course, this year we’ll be cutting down considerably, given that by June I’ll be too monstrously big to pack myself into one of those tiny seats at that antiquated temple of baseball known as Wrigley Field and that come July, I won’t be making any social commitments for awhile.

With that in mind, I wanted to target mid-to-late May (any earlier and you’ve got a fairly good shot of freezing through 3 hours of baseball in 30-degree weather; though that danger is really still there through early June), the end of August and September (here’s hoping for October, too!). I was fortunate enough to get in through the online route about an hour and a half into the morning and nabbed a couple of bleachers seats for an Aug. 29 game against the Mets.

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that reality really set in.

Andy emailed me in frustration and said that he’d been kicked out of the online ticketing room several times after finally getting in and that while he was attempting to get tickets for various games we were targeted, he found that they were pretty much all sold out, at least when it came to seats that were in a reasonable place for the money they were charging ($50 a pop for section 536? Really?). So I started looking at what other dates we might want and checked out the weekday games, which are generally easier to come by.

And then it hit me.

Come July, our days of heading out straight from work to spend a summer weeknight at Wrigley are pretty much O-V-E-R over. It’s no big deal to get my parents to babysit on a weekend afternoon or even night (given how excited they are about their first grandchild, I fully expect to be fighting them off), but weeknights are a whole different ballgame. Generous and kid-crazy as they are, my parents don’t want to be hanging out at our place until 11 or midnight when they have to get up for work the next day, especially given that they’re not nearly as keen on babysitting once the child is asleep and no longer entertaining them with its adorable-ness.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, Andy and I really don’t go out a whole lot during the week, at least not together. I’ll have dinner with some girlfriends, he’ll meet co-workers for drinks, and we can still do that once we’re each comfortable enough with our new parenting skills to take charge of the baby alone for a night. But it’s still a wake-up call to realize that something that’s been a big part of our life together ever before we were even dating (most of our early hanging out revolved around Cubs games) is coming to a screeching halt.

It just goes to show that no matter how much people try to tell you that your life is going to change completely once the baby comes, you can’t ever really, truly get it until it actually happens. To a tiny degree, some understanding begins to dawn slowly as the big day approaches, and that’s what happened to me last Friday.

So what did I do? I bought tickets to what will be our last weeknight game for awhile: Tuesday, May 12 vs. San Diego. We’ll run our usual routine: I’ll drive out to Wrigleyville straight from work and park in our standard spot at Ravenswood and Waveland, about a mile away from the field (if my bulging belly prevents me from walking that far at that point, I’ll flout our policy of never paying for parking and get closer). Andy will take the train in and meet me in one of our favorite places to sit, the second row of the 400 section, the first tier of pint-sized Wrigley’s upper deck. From up there, the birds-eye view of the field is fantastic.

On a clear night, with the lights of the city stretching out to the suburbs on one side and the lake on the other,  it’s like sitting on top of the world.

Looks Like We’re Playing For …

… team pink! Well, not literally, of course – I’m not one to go crazy with the pink nursery and pink clothes and whatnot. But yes, it’s a girl!!

It was just a crazy day overall. I’ve really enjoyed the anticipation over the last few weeks (though there were times where I didn’t want to have to wait a minute longer to know), and all day it was so much fun to just have it looming ahead. I’ve been getting texts and emails all week from my friends who have been eagerly waiting along with me (or eagerly waiting for me to shut the hell up about it already), and that’s been a really special part of the whole thing, too. It makes me feel like everyone’s in this with us.

The day actually went by quickly since work was super busy, as always, and I got to the doctor’s office about 10 minutes before our 3:30 appointment. Andy came in a few minutes later and we just kind of chatted and giggled together nervously. I had thought I’d feel more nervous, but it was more like a slightly anxious excitement. Andy said he had some butterflies but didn’t really know why.

I got it. It’s a big deal. I mean, first off, the big reason for the ultrasound is to make sure everything is developing as it should, so that’s a huge deal in itself. And secondly, as I’ve said, something about knowing the sex is one big step toward making it all feel more real. Even when we were waiting to meet with the doctor after the ultrasound revealed its big secret (and yes, it was very obvious that our little one was all girl – it’s amazing what you can see on those things!), we were already talking about what she might look like and be like and enjoy doing (cooking with mom and watching baseball with mom and dad, hopefully!).

Besides the obvious reason, the ultrasound was pretty cool all around. The baby definitely looks bigger than at our last one on New Year’s Eve, and the tech was able to spend more time showing us things like each tiny but perfectly formed arm, her amazing beating heart and even two little feet! She showed us how the baby is positioned inside me – head down, feet up and limbs stretched out to my right. We definitely saw some movement, too – bouncing and kicking and arms swinging to and fro. We even got to see a few shots in 3-D, which is totally crazy and makes the baby look even more like a little alien being than the regular images.

So there you have it – the big reveal is over and done with. I’ve been texting and calling friends and family all night, and it’s almost as much fun as getting to share the news about the pregnancy in the first place. I guess tomorrow won’t seem nearly as fun by comparison, but that’s fine with me! Time to start moving forward with nursery plans, names, maybe even buying a tiny outfit or two … plenty of good stuff ahead!

Of Bananas, Baby Classes and Blizzards

So the title of this post just refers to a few mostly unrelated topics about today. Most amusing, I think, is the banana thing. I subscribe to this weekly email newsletter from babycenter.com that updates you on the progress of your baby each week of the pregnancy and runs down some of the fun and not-so-fun symptoms mothers-to-be might be experiencing at this point.

One of the more quirky, and I have to say, kind of useless, staples of the email is the “how big is your baby this week” comparison. Besides just giving you an average length and weight (today: 6.5 inches longs, 10.5 ounces – hey, I can finally start attributing some of that baby weight gain to THE BABY!), they also feel that it might be helpful, in case you can’t quite visualize the size based on actual measurements, to compare it to a common, everyday object. Usually, for reasons known only to the babycenter gods as they snicker at us from their lofty perch, this object is a fruit.

In the first weeks, they started with stuff like blueberries, grapes and kumquats and have progressed to avocados, turnips and bell peppers. Last week, my baby was an heirloom tomato (because those are of such a uniform size and shape)! Seriously! At the beginning, I could kind of get it. The baby is so tiny at first, and possibly the shape is something approaching round. But I just find it hard to relate what my baby is supposed to look like to something like an apple – I mean, if it’s developing normally, it really shouldn’t be anywhere near that shape at all!

It’s become a running joke at home and at the office, where my co-workers are great sports about listening to my regular pregnancy prattle. When the email arrived today, I called out, “Okay, it’s time to guess this week’s fruit!” They knew immediately what I was talking about. After a few incorrect guesses (I think “durian” was a joke – scroll down in this link to see one; it’s actually kind of frightening, like something hatching), Kate correctly named that fruit: a banana! Hey, at least it’s long and slightly curved, unlike a lumpy, misshapen (but oh so tasty) heirloom tomato …

Also notable about today is that I did something that made me feel extremely productive: I signed up for our prenatal classes. I don’t actually need to start them til the 7th or 8th month, but everything I read kept saying you have to sign up early because they fill up fast, so this morning I dutifully called the hospital and secured our slots. We’re in for four weeks of “prepared childbirth” in May (as if anything can prepare you for that), where they teach you the breathing and birthing and whatnot -I’m sure I’ll remember it all word for word when I’m trying to squeeze out a baby that hopefully will not be the size of say, a watermelon, by then. We’ll also do one night of breastfeeding – again, probably more helpful with an actual child to practice on, but hopefully they repeat some of those lessons in the hospital with a lactation consultant (now there’s a career opportunity for you) – and one night of infant CPR.

To be honest, I’m not sure how helpful any of these classes will be when push comes to shove (though the CPR at least seems like a solid bet), but it’s doing something that makes me feel like I’m at least trying to prepare, which is somewhat ironic given that parenting is probably the thing you can really prepare for least in the world, beyond the basics like buying a crib and a car seat and all that.

Anyway, my last note about today is that Andy and I drove over to the (thankfully) nearby Goodwill with our third truckfull of donations in the past few weeks. Progress, I say! It’s only a little disheartening that there is still at least as much stuff as we’ve already given away, recycled and thrown away (the tiniest part – hey, we’re trying to be green here!) that we need clear out of the soon-to-be baby’s room and what is slowly but surely shaping up to be our downstairs office.

As a reward, Andy suggested that we go get a treat and by sheer coincidence, guess what was within a one-minute drive of Goodwill? Praise the lord, a Dairy Queen! And that’s the heartwarming story of how little Baby M tasted his/her first Blizzard. Ummm, Butterfinger … Ah, nothing like passing on life’s true simple pleasures to the next generation …

Dosing Up

I’ve never been the kind of person to try to “tough it out” when I’m sick. I’m a pill popper from way back.

I’m not talking about anything hard core;  just your standard headache medicines and allergy meds and all that good stuff. I’m not a weenie or anything, but in my opinion, we should take advantage of the advances of medical science. That’s what medicine there for, right?

Andy doesn’t agree. He has this silly idea that he has to suffer through the symptoms to get over whatever illness he has and that taking medicine will just prolong that process. I’ve tried to convince him that the drugs are meant to help alleviate the symptoms while the illness runs its course, and that’s why, in fact, they exist, but he doesn’t buy it. Conversely, he thinks I’ve taken too many pills over my lifetime and says that’s why they don’t affect me as much. Hey, it’s not my fault that I grew up with bad allergies and had to pop antihistamines every single day to keep them under control. Of course that could explain why things like Tylenol PM and Nyquil, which are supposed to knock me into a blissful, drug-induced stupor, have little effect on me.

But I digress. The point is that I knew that when I got pregnant my pill popping ways would have to end. There are things you’re allowed to take, thank goodness.  You can take Tylenol but not ibuprofen or aspirin (I hadn’t taken Tylenol in years and forgot how ineffective it is. I took it once so far since I’ve been pregnant for a bad headache but to little avail. And my beloved Advil almost always does the trick. Sigh). For colds,  my doctors’ office says Benadryl, Sudafed and Robitussin DM are OK.

But still, it seems like a good idea to hold off whenever possible, and I’ve been lucky enough that I haven’t really been sick much so far, so I didn’t have to worry about it. I’ve been joking that my body must be in some sort of shock from going almost five months with no medicine whatsoever except for those couple of Tylenol.

Anyway, this whole discussion is just a precursor to the note that very suddenly this morning, I started sneezing and sniffling, and it just got worse throughout the day. After walking around all afternoon with a kleenex practically attached to my nose, I stopped at the store on the way home from work and bought some Benadryl. It took a couple hours, but it seems to have helped (unless, of course, it was the magical medicinal qualities of the fabulous dal we had for dinner). As one of my co-workers always used to say, “Better living through drugs.”

Yes, indeed!

Of Baby Brain, Nannies and other Miscellany

I locked myself in my pants today. Seriously. I was literally stuck in my khakis.

It was the rubber-band trick that got me. I figured I’d wear these non-maternity khakis since they’re one of the two pairs of pre-pregnancy pants I can still get over my butt, where apparently half of my pregnancy weight is going, and my stomach, where the other half is (more understandably) showing up.

So it’s mid-morning and I make one of my many trips to the bathroom, but instead of unwinding the rubber band from around the button of my pants I somehow keep winding it around instead, and I keep doing it until it’s so tightly wrapped around it that there’s no way I can get it untangled. I actually had to leave the bathroom and cut it off. I blamed it on baby brain, since I obviously just wasn’t thinking during what should have been a fairly mindless task.

In other (better) news, I know I wrote recently about the challenges of researching good daycare. That whole issue was made even more frightening the other day when that news story came out about the 22-year-old local daycare worker who killed an 18 month old when she literally slammed him to the floor because she was frustrated with him. How utterly horrifying is that? I know a girl who actually considered that very same place for her son, who is the same age, and she was incredibly shaken by the story. Any parent would be. I mean, it’s hard enough to send your child into a stranger’s care, but many, many families don’t have a choice but to do just that, and then you hear about something like this.

Of course, even with a nanny you aren’t completely escaping that problem. But when you’re picking a nanny, the search and interview process is much more about the person herself (or himself, I suppose, but let’s be realistic here) than about the place, which is where most of the research for daycare centers focuses. I bring up the nanny thing because the other night out of the blue, Laurie called and said she and Jeff have decided not to send their girls back to his sister for another year after all. They’re going to get a nanny instead, which puts our old idea of nanny sharing back on the table.

I’m excited about it for a lot of reasons. First, because the attention is much more personal, and the kids would be at ours or their house rather than somewhere that could be farther away. Also, they can do personalized outings, there won’t be a room full of kids who will be getting sick all the time, and the kids can all get to know their cousins (well, as much as an infant can “know” people, I suppose).

So the four of us are going to get together next Friday and talk details: how it might work, what kind of person we’d want to find, what hours we’d want them to cover, and of course, how the finances would work. We touched on this a little in our initial conversation. On one hand you could say they should pay 2/3 and we should pay 1/3 because they have two kids and we’ll have one. But one of their girls will be in kindergarten half the day. And babies demand a different level of care. But babies also spend a lot of time sleeping. And so on. The four of us have a very good relationship so I think these discussions will go smoothly, but I hope it doesn’t end up being the kind of thing that we could eventually fight about. Laurie has a very strong personality, but then, so can I. So we’ll see. Nothing’s definite, but I’m excited about it.

In other news, we had a doctors’ appointment this morning. Now that we have our fetal doppler, the excitement of hearing the baby’s heartbeat there isn’t as big of a deal, but it’s always nice to have the chance to ask the doctor my random questions. Unlike last time, when literally the only thing I could think of to ask was whether I could eat sausage, I had a small list this time:

• Were these new and changing moles I was getting normal or should I see a dermatologist? (They were fine; I’ve read in multiple places that moles can get darker or more numerous during pregnancy, but it’s always good to have them checked out).
• Were there any yoga moves I shouldn’t be doing during pregnancy? (My doctor asked if I was doing prenatal yoga classes and I said, no, just the yoga on Wii Fit. She said the poses should be fine unless they put too much pressure on my abdomen or cause me to really bear down. As far as poses that start on my back, she said I’d feel it when I shouldn’t be doing those anymore).
• Should I stop drinking my two caffeine-free Diet Cokes a day and cup or two of decaf coffee because of the artificial sweeteners in the soda and small amounts of caffeine in the coffee? (No and no).
• Was my 10-pound weight gain at 16 weeks and 5 days too much? (For now it’s fine, she said, but she added that it should start to taper off. I wonder how or why that would happen, though, since I can’t see myself starting to be less hungry…)

And that was it. The really big part of the visit came at the very end, when we scheduled our next appointment. Yes, four weeks from today, on Feb. 19, we’ll find out the answer to that eternal question: pink or blue?

Let the Hormones Begin!

I’m surprised it took this long. I just hit the 16-week mark yesterday, and today I had my first mini-breakdown. It just came completely out of the blue.

I’d convinced Andy to take a walk with me downtown to return a movie we’d rented on Friday (I wanted to get some exercise and fresh air since it was a balmy 14 degrees, which felt warm after our recent spate of sub-zero weather. Plus, I consumed close to my weight in meat and veggies at the Korean bbq place last night, so I really needed to burn some calories). We went upstairs to bundle up, and I pulled my long underwear, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt and my last pair of non-maternity jeans that stil fits (with the help of a rubber band) out of our walk-in closet. The thing about this closet is that the doorframe is so low that you have to bend down a little to walk in and out or else you’ll smack your head. Well, as I’ve done many times before, I forgot.

Usually I just suck it up and laugh off the pain or let out a highly unladylike curse, but today I walked over to the bed, curled up in a ball and started crying. And I just couldn’t stop. Andy was completely flummoxed. He hates to see me cry and he was worried that I’d really hurt myself. I explained, between snotty sniffles, that it didn’t really hurt that much and no, I wasn’t sad about anything in particular, I just couldn’t get rid of that weepy feeling. He hugged me and talked to me and made me laugh, and I’d start to come out of it, but after a minute or so the weepy feeling would come back.

Finally I said we’d better just get going with our walk or we’d be there all day. I shook it off and we took our walk and I was fine the rest of the day. But I think it’s probably a preview of things to come – sometimes, those hormones are just going to get the better of me. I mentioned it to Becca when she called tonight, and she laughed and said, “Just wait until AFTER the baby comes. That’s when that kind of thing will really happen.” Ah, so much to look forward to!  Besides all the REALLY good stuff, I mean

One Thing I’m Sick of Hearing …

We went out with some friends on Saturday night whose son just turned one, and they told us that the thing they found most annoying when they were pregnant was all the people telling them, “Your life is going to completely change.” Well, I’ve had people tell me that, too, and it will probably get old given that it’s kind of a no-brainer, but that’s not the comment that’s been bugging me. What bugs me is the women – usually older but not always – who tell you that when THEY were pregnant, they didn’t worry about all that stuff like not having caffeine or avoiding undercooked meats and unpasteurized cheeses, and their kids turned out JUST FINE.

It just sounds so smug and superior, like they’re thinking, “Oh, why do these pregnant women today have to make such a big fuss and make a big deal out of every little thing?” I have a lot of different responses to this way of thinking, the first of which is that everyone does what they’re comfortable with and what their own doctor advises. Some (like me) give up caffeine but still have a caffeine-free Diet Coke or two a day even though it has artificial sweeteners (which the American Pregnancy Association says is just fine, by the way). Others can’t give up their caffeine but avoid artificial sweeteners. Some eat deli meat, some don’t (my doctor said that’s fine, too). Some, heaven forbid, avoid bacon for their entire pregnancies! BUT — to each her own, I say.

My second response is to those who say things like, “Well, I’ve never heard of anyone I know getting listeria or salmonella.” Well, that’s probably because first of all, you’re unlikely to contract either of those things if you’re not pregnant or don’t have another condition that’s weakening your immune system. And second of all, maybe you’re not hearing about pregnant women having trouble with these diseases because they’re all avoiding unsafe foods!

My third response is that while your child might not have come out with three eyes or other obvious health problems, there’s no telling what afflictions, small or big, can be traced back in some way to what you did or didn’t do during pregnancy. Now again, I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to be the pregnancy police and that all pregnant women need to avoid just about everything to make absolutely sure that their child is perfect. Because that’s not going to happen, and you certainly can’t control everything. My point is just that maybe there’s a reason that you haven’t thought about that explains why your child has asthma, or reproductive problems, or is smaller than most of the other kids their age. Maybe those things have nothing whatsoever to do with anything you did, but maybe they do, so hold off on patting yourself on the back just yet.

So to sum up my little rant, to all those current parents who can’t help but share how proud they are that they didn’t change their behavior at all during pregnancy, maybe next time you can just bite your tongue. You can still shake your head and talk about how silly I’m being after I leave.

The Childcare Question

Before we ever got pregnant, we used to joke, semi-seriously, with Laurie and Jeff that if we had a baby at the right time, we could share a nanny. They’ve been in the lucky position since they had their first little girl 4 1/2 years ago to have Jeff’s sister watch the kids at her house with their cousins. They pay her, of course, but what a sweet deal to be able to leave your kids with someone you absolutely know beyond all doubt you can trust 110%. The only drawback for them is that his sister lives about 30 minutes in the complete opposite direction from where either of them work, so it makes for long commutes each way. They switch off – one does the morning and the other the afternoon.

But the point is that they were going to stop that this next school year because his sister was thinking about going back to work. And they’re about reading to be done with  all the driving, too, so when we got pregnant with a July due date, it seemed like the timing was perfect and that we might really be able to try nanny sharing. I did a little investigating online, and not only is a good nanny hard to find, but boy, they are expensive! But we figured it could be worthwhile sharing the bill. Unfortunately, when I talked to Laurie about it the other week, it looks like they might stick with their current arrangement for another year after all. That means I really have to start thinking hard about daycare.

There are so many questions to ask – do we want a center or in-home? If we choose a center, are the big chains good or is it better to go with a local independent provider? What are the benefits of in-home care, and how do you find a good, reputable provider? Which of these might be willing to provide part-time care, since we might have my dad watch the baby for a day or two each week?

Given all the online research I do for work, I’m pretty savvy when it comes to Google, but still, there’s SO much info out there. There are a few Web sites that offer rankings of local childcare, but the thing is, none of them really has gotten popular enough to reach the critical mass it needs to be really valid. There might be one or two reviews for a handful of places, but even then, you don’t really know if actual customers wrote them. I have read some good things about some national programs, and I’ll look into their branches in my neighborhood to start. Then the question becomes, when do you need to start really getting serious? Should I be booking appointments to tour these places now? So many things I hear and read say you need to get on waiting lists as early as the first trimester for some places.

Obviously the ideal thing would be to get recommendations from people I know, but the thing is, everyone I know with kids has found some great in-home set-up where they somehow know the person, or just gets a sitter a couple of days a week, or stays home. I don’t know anyone who sends their kids to a daycare center locally.

For now, my plan is to call a few local centers I’ve found and to try to talk to my next door neighbor to see if she has any recommendations. She stays at home with her kids, but she’s lived in this neighborhood a long time and might have heard things. She also knows a lot of the other neighbors that have kids. Not much of a plan yet, but that’s all I’ve got.